Comments on: 1973 Lighthill debate

By: Vladimir Nesov

Vladimir Nesov — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:15:54 +0000

I don’t believe it’s a good FAI path — too much is essentially on heuristics, and conceptual foundations are even more dodgy.

By: Roko

Roko — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:32:03 +0000

exponential progress in computing power isn’t supposed to lead to exponential progress in perceived AI ability.

It is supposed to lead to a step function in perceived AI ability, with the step occurring when AI exceeds human ability,

By: Roko

Roko — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:25:37 +0000

Right, but McCarthy et al were stuck in the land of logic-based AI; they didn’t know about machine learning.

Realizing that a ML/probabilistic paradigm is necessary for AI is a significant step.

By: Kevembuangga

Kevembuangga — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:27:42 +0000

Difficult to say whats this worth at first glance but at least he seem concerned with problems of representation which I think are definitely the stumblestone of AI rather than sequence prediction.

By: dude-man

dude-man — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:14:20 +0000

i came across this view a few years ago , what do people thing ?

http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/pubspage.html

Why Children Don’t have to Solve the Frame Problems
http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/childrenframe.html
seem one of the more intersting.

By: Shane Legg

Shane Legg — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:13:17 +0000

I think they already knew what the problem was/is: it’s the combinatorial explosion that Lighthill kept going on about. Somehow the brain can deal with vast input and output spaces that are richly structured. When algorithms have to make decisions in such spaces they choke. In my view the brain deals with this by using huge amounts of computation, long learning times and a clever algorithm that builds deep hierarchical networks that reduce these large spaces down to manageable proportions.

By: Kevembuangga

Kevembuangga — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:25:17 +0000

Watched this too and I didn’t see anything “exponential” in the progress AI made in MORE THAN 35 YEARS, and this is not for lack of computing power which progress actually has been exponential (roughly), the computers being about 20000 times larger and faster than in 1973.
We are still far, far away of our own monkey cleverness, some missing ingredient may be?

By: Roko

Roko — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:04:08 +0000

Also interesting, as one looks back upon this debate, is how 3 bright intellects and 1 super-bright intellect wasted their time engaging in sophistry, arguing over definitions, etc, instead of actually using their intellects together to make progress on the problem. They could have concentrated on the implicit technical question that was left hanging for the entire debate: if the human brain does it, but our programs can’t, then what are we missing? Between them, they might even have been able to make some progress in going beyond McCarthy’s logic based approach.

By: Roko

Roko — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:52:44 +0000

I just watched the video. Interesting, especially as one of the people in the video (Rod Burstall) was a colleague from my time at Edinburgh last year. I feel connected to the history

In general, it seems that Lighthill ended up running a “No true scotsman” argument: AI never produces any results, and when presented with a concrete result, he says “ah, well, that’s advanced automation, not AI”.

McCarthy was clearly the superior intellect in that conversation. Donald Mackie came across as a bright, but not quite at McCarthy’s level. This is interesting, because I spent a lot of last year reading vintage McCarthy papers, and noticing that the combined insights of McCarthy and Judea Pearl seemed to define a standard of deep understanding that one rarely sees.

By: Shane Legg

Shane Legg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:45:51 +0000

Not that I know of.

By: Rolf Nelson

Rolf Nelson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:03:02 +0000

No transcript, I assume?